Confessions of a Misoshopist

Confessions of a Misoshopist

(Of XXL, Discounts and Holes)

It all started with the ads leaflet which comes with TOI, you know the one that's named ‘Pune Times’. (sounds like the lame cousin of Bombay Times) But it has no pretences, it quite honestly states albeit in a small font that it is an 'advertorial, entertainment industry promotional feature'.
So basically an Ads Paper.

      This PT which wants to be a BT but is actually an AP (still better than the one with the extra A) was full of monsoon offer ads; the usual copy repeated year after year- 'it's raining discounts', 'magical monsoons', 'monsoon dhamaka', 'monsoon mania'  with the graphic of colourful umbrellas.

      I unlike the stereotype regarding women and our love for shopping don't like it that much.
To sum up the reasons- I am too lazy to push my ass out of bed, go to a crowded mall, push and shove my way through racks and racks of clothes, feel guilty about my obesity as they design clothes mostly for starved people, then go on to try the clothes I picked in the stuffy room after standing in a long ass line and feeling extremely gareeb at the end of the ordeal! I also dislike shopping because I don’t think I deserve anything new as I consider myself the scum of the earth! But anyone and everyone who knows me has heard and read enough about the self-hatred so I won't dwelve on it here. Nonetheless, I couldn’t escape the lure of the discounts as my miserliness tops my laziness and self-hatred.

    Contrary to another stereotype - my husband loves shopping and as soon as I told him about the monsoon discounts, the man started going on and on regarding how few clothes he has and the need to upgrade his wardrobe! The guy believe you me, has double the number of clothes than me! I just don't understand how many blue t-shirts a man can wear. They are all blue for God's sake!

    

    Oh, completing the hat trick of stereotype breaking, I have no idea about colors other than the basic ones. When I hear friends talking about fuchsia, ebony, coral, amaranth, salmon and so on I just nod my head with a smile as we often do to feel inclusive. (‘Coquelicot’ I kid you not is an actual orangish color as google mata told me! Just try pronouncing it, not in front of kids though.)
Another thing I can’t get my head around is the type of material. I understand the basic ones like cotton, silk, wool but the rest be it corduroy, brocade, fleece and so on  I just don't get it. Silk is supposed to be silky to touch right?!? Then what the hell is cotton silk? A salesgirl once showed me something made from ‘organza’. What’s with all these sexual references first the coquelicot now this! Let’s not forget all those styles and patterns - off shoulders, cold shoulders,empire lining, peplum, gypsy, smock, cossack (are we still talking English?). I remember the empire lining trend when that is all you got anywhere making life really difficult for us large-bosomed women. It is this stupid tight line just below the breasts making them look even more humongous than they already are and making you stoop even more than you already do! Currently everyone is wearing stuff with holes on the shoulders! What’s up with these holes?!? They started making an appearance in jeans, then below the neckline, the waist and now the shoulders! Even the plain old jeans have styles like skinny, distressed, boot-cut and pedal pusher and what not. The holes in them have progressed to full grown tears, called ripped or distressed or something. Why would you want to pay for new clothes which look worn out and old and torn, the kind of clothes my mother used to give to the bhangarwala in exchange for some good old bartans! I wouldn’t be surprised if she exchanged my brother’s brand new ripped denims for a kadhai.

To sum it up my fashion sense is such that the term “power dressing” for me means AB’s costume from “saara zamana haseeno ka deewana…” But as the malls are filled with only the current trends you have no option but to go with the flow (especially when you seek discounts).

     So there we were at Westend mall, me with a ‘kill me now’ expression on my face and Adi with a ‘I am going to Disneyland' expression on his. On some previous visit ages ago the Shoppers Stop counter guy had convinced us to buy their membership card, so we thought chalo ispe aur discount milega plus the store is on one of the lower floors. My shopping philosophy is ‘to expend the least energy possible’, therefore even with the elevators and escalators I had no intention of going to the top floors. I hesitated at the entrance rethinking the whole thing after seeing the hordes of people inside. Why do so many people need so many clothes? Those goddamned Adam and Eve should never have eaten that apple and got all self conscious about nudity! But, the 50% off and 70% off danglers pulled me in.

      The guard offered us a look of ‘aa gaye paise udane’ while handing a netted sack to dump our choices in. To delay the inevitable the shop’s arrangement helped me. The sections near the entrance were for guys. Now this part I love - choosing clothes for other people because there is no evil judgemental voice shrieking in my head then. So I waltzed from one brand to the other, pulled out jeans and tees and casual shirts for my man and stepped on his feet quite subtly when his hand extended towards the blues and greys. At the centre there were arranged the clothes from the brand of an actor who supposedly can act, who never shot any chinkaras, and who never drove his car.
I not only didn't let Adi near it but said some stuff loud enough to make quite a few other people walk away from it (ya i am bitchy most of the times especially for topics je dokyat jatat (nothing can convey it as strongly as this marathi phrase)) oo brackets within bracket the advocate inside refuses to die…

          About an hour later, Adi waited patiently in the dressing room line, a jolly smile lighting up his face due to the high of shopping and a bag full of clothes that he held on his shoulders looking very much like Santa Claus. Women hovered at the entrance to the dressing room passage ready to arm twist their men into buying what they like, you know good enough for them to look at but not so good that other women look at their men! Adi as usual ended up buying much more than he needed by chanting ‘discount discount discount’ like some mantra in my ear.

        Now came the irksome part. Just looking at the vast area which the women's section occupied had me rooted to the spot. Taking advantage of the breathlessness I suffer from a lot of times, I tried faking it to convince navra to get out of there (when the fuckers anxiety and depression trouble you so much all the time they might as well help in certain situations). But I was caught out as Adi knows me a little too well, the insufferable sod! So there I was shifting those hangers looking for the dark colors hoping that they would make me look slimmer. Nine out of ten times the color or pattern I liked didn’t have a double XL (ya no point in hiding that, you all know I am obese.)  The poor X rating doesn’t have a good image vis-à-vis clothing as compared to you know where. To add to all the other confusions there are different sizing charts! So as per my limited understanding my XXL equates to size 18 as per UK standards, size 16 as per USA standards, 19 as per Japan, 20 as per Australia and 28 as per Wakanda! So depending on where the blasted brand is from the figures keep changing (though all of them are finally made in India or China). This is the information I have now thanks to Google but didn’t know on this shopping spree. So when one sales girl asked me if I am 16, I beamed brightly saying, “Oh come on I don’t look that young.” All credits to the poor girl who did her best not to laugh out loud.

        The stores are mostly organised enough and have clothes arranged as per size to make our lives easier but as we as a society are averse to public discipline, customers just keep anything anywhere and so there is that lonely barbie sized top amidst the hulk sized ones and vice versa. After awhile i just started asking the salespeople around to help me pull out the double XLs.
If I refused to try one of their choices, they would coax me with kind words saying “ma'am you are not fat at all, you are just healthy.” Now I am quite aware ‘healthy’ is a euphemistic word for you ‘old fat cow’ but nonetheless the ego boost made me try their suggestions on.

      Oh and then came the dreaded dressing room line. Looking at the dressing rooms bursting at the seams, I was totally coming apart at the seams. (get it? get it?). By the time it was my turn at the trial room, I had lost all interest in sizes and patterns and styles and discounts and clothes and life.
I somehow gathered whatever energy was left and stepped inside the small and stuffy room where the fans seldom work and which remind me of Circuit’s dialogue from Munnabhai MBBS “Bhai yeh toh shuru hote hee khatam ho jata hai”.

          The aversion to public discipline and basic etiquette is seen here as well in the form of clothes left on the hooks and on the floor by the previous occupants. So amidst all the mess I somehow manage to undress and dress. Oh that fucking dressing room mirror crushes whatever is left of your self-esteem. It is so close in that small room with harsh lights that it shows you every pimple, wrinkle, spots, and all those other annoying things on your face and a magnified version of all your tyres!

         I had ended up picking up some tops with shoulder holes because most of them had it.
While trying the first one, twice I ended up with one hand through the arm hole and the other through the shoulder hole, cursed a lot and finally got it on the third try. There was no way I could step out to show navra how it is looking. The hate beams emanating from the eyes of the waiting women would have turned me into dust right away and not been part of the Marvel universe I can’t be resurrected. So there I was alone and sweaty surrounded by clothes in that room fit enough only for Ant-man, with the judgemental voices in my head ever so loud. But I had promised myself to choose at least a few of the ones we had acquired after so much struggle.

           After the struggle with the holed tops was an all black one which I was quite sure I wanted to buy. I could figure out the neck but the hemline was diagonal and ended up with some narrow strips. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were for but thought chalo yaar black hai fit ho raha hai I will just cut off the strips later. A friend explained the next day that I am supposed to tie a knot with those strips. Aren’t knots supposed to be hidden inside clothes, the ones you tie of the good old nadas?

         Then there was this green top (bottle or olive or light or grassy no clue) looked simple enough, I almost felt like I could deal with it. My head popped out of the right hole so did my right hand but they had forgotten to make the arm hole for the left one! I had concluded it to be defective but on removing it again I realised there was a weird hole down near the waist area. What the hell is going on with the world? I wore it again all the necessary body parts coming out of all the necessary holes and voila i actually loved my reflection (not myself that would be a little too much) the displaced hole had given some beautiful crease like pattern and actually made my kambra look a wee bit closer to a kambar. I have learnt now this kind of sleeve is called ‘Batwing’.

       There were a few more with all the holes in the right places so I  breezed through them until this one which the navra had selected (*&#$^@*). This was a dress on top of a dress, God knows why he wanted me more layered. One is supposed to put the arms through the hidden armholes of the inside dress and then through the outside armholes, then play around with some hooks on one side which by itself was a baba ramdev experience. After that struggle the layer above is supposed to be draped and the fucking knot made an appearance again. The outer layer was to be tied with its other part again on one side. On the first try I couldn’t hook the inner one and just ended up tying the knot so my entire front was exposed, the second time one arm came out of the outside layer, the other from the inside layer leading to one of my breasts popping out. After two more tries and a lot and I mean a really hell lot of curses I finally got it right! But then I felt bad about the curses because it again turned out to be something which could give the illusion of shape to a shapeless person.
Well if that is the end result the struggle was worth it but I am still not sure if it is called a wrap dress or a faux wrap or a flip dress or something else.

       At the bottom of the heap were two plain Polo tees looking like good old friends, no frills.
Just tried them on for size and decided i would definitely buy those two. When I told Adi about them, the man laughed like he never had making everyone go still for a moment and stare at us.
In between the spurt of laughter he told me that I had tried on his tees, the ones I had myself selected just two hours ago. All those knots and hooks and holes had definitely fried my brain!
But after all that struggle I could buy clothes of brands like Vero Moda, STOP, Frattinni, Zink et al, brands which I never even look at. Seriously I have never entered a Zara or Vero Moda showroom.
I just feel too gareeb to even go in and my hyper anxious brain imagines all the people inside pointing and laughing at me as I stand their with no clothes on! So thanks to this monsoon discount thing I have clothes of these high and mighty brands (ache din??)  I am thinking of not cutting of those price tags because they have the original price and the brand name. I can start a new trend wearing the price tag as an accessory! Well if holes can rule the show then anything is possible.

       The last stop is at the cash counter where you stand in yet another line. The cash counter guy generally has the expression ‘dekho kaise chutiya banaya discount ka board lagake’. As he punched in the items one by one we realized two of our items which we had thought are on 70% discount and congratulated ourselves for getting a steal were actually up to 70% with the up to written in extremely small font at some corner of the board hanging high up from the ceiling. But now we really wanted to buy them after the entire battle we went through so we just pulled out our card whilst simultaneously calculating the month's budget  and working out what expenses we would need to cut to balance this day out. Out of the door with bags in hand (paper ones off course) we told each other no more expenses this month, no movies, no eating out, nothing. We then spotted the Tea Trails opposite beckoning our parched throats with those lovely ice teas. Then Adi's phone pinged with the notification of the weekly mails by bookmyshow reminding us of the week's new releases and we just looked at each other with his thumb hovering over the screen.

- Sneha Karle
 July 17, 2018